Friday, August 10, 2007

THE FLYING TERRORIST - a world exclusive!

No, this isn't (see video below) the new clip of Randy Crawford's song 'One Day I'll Fly Away'. Nor is it the new Super-, Spider- or He-Man.

This is exclusive footage of an Al-Qaeda inspired terrorist getting directly hit by a Lebanese army mortar.(If you wanna know why it is a terrorist and NOT a civilian, please click here) But that isn't the end, it is basically the beginning. Immediately after the mortar hits the building, the militant is - literally - catapulted 40 meters into the air. Eventually he falls back to earth and disappears in the smoke of the explosion. This little clip, to me at least, shows the madness of war.

I shot this footage, accidentally, on Tuesday with my little and cheap Sony digital camera while visiting the outskirts of the Nahr al Bared refugee camp, north of the Lebanese city of Tripoli. As I am a print reporter and hardly ever work for TV, I never carry professional camera equipment with me. This said though, I have never heard of a similar scene being caught on camera. If I'm wrong, please let me know.

The Lebanese army and Al-Qaeda inspired terrorists of Fatah al Islam are already engaged in a three month long battle inside the Nahr al Bared refugee camp. This mini-war has, up to now, killed at least 145 Lebanese soldiers and an unknown number of terrorists. Well, as the clip will show you, at least since Tuesday there was one terrorist less.

Before people start to freak out - You can watch this video without getting nightmares. I was standing around 600 meters away (my little camera was, by chance, rolling), so you don't see any details at all. I mean, I had to visit a professional video editor here in Beirut to zoom in on the footage.

In this little clip, I've repeated the same 10 seconds scene a couple of times to make it clear to viewers what is actually happening.

First part is a medium zoom-in version of the original in real time. Lebanese mortar hits a building and out of the plume of smoke, a little human figure is being catapulted into the air. You can hear the shouting of exited Lebanese civilians next to me saying "Lake, lake!" which means "Look, look!". From the place where we were standing, you could see the Flying Terrorist actually pretty clearly. The people next to me had never seen something like this. "Yes, we see the bombing, the shelling and the shooting," a man told me, "But you just never ever see these Fatah al Islam terrorists". Over the weeks, I have been in the outskirts of the camp for a total of more than 100 hours and had only once, for a fraction of a second, seen a militant firing his machine gun from a window. And then suddenly this: A Flying Terrorist.

The second part is the same version but in slow motion, third is with a little red circle around the unlucky militant, fourth and fifth are very much zoomed in (bad quality, the more you zoom in, the worse the quality of the picture gets), sixth part is the original version the way my little Sony captured it. The total length of the whole clip is around 58 seconds.

Although the death of any person is - in theory - never a happy occasion, I can't be that sad about the end of this guy's life. Fatah al Islam is a very dangerous Islamic Doomsday cult. 99.9 percent of Lebanese people hate them and consider the group a total disgrace to Islam. Fatah al Islam members suddenly started beheading Lebanese soldiers on May 20th of this year (I've got a video of two beheaded soldiers - am for sure NOT going to put that on youtube, because it is so disgusting you aren't gonna sleep for a week. Why behead somebody AND pull his eyes out?).

After firing thousands of mortars into the camp, the Lebanese army is clearly getting more and more experienced. This one was spot on. And a lucky shot for this reporter. Because in journalism (especially in war reporting) it rarely happens that you are at the right place, at the right moment.

126 comments:

A fascinating scene that raises a lot of ethical questions as well as questions of a more technical nature. Is this guy (woman?) actually dead? Where did he fall? Did somebody else film this same event? The army maybe? How cheap do camera's have to be before everybody is wearing one (and we could have seen this happen from the victims perspective)?Great shot Harald!

Who can say for certain that this is a terrorist? Was he labelled?To most of us it looks like a human being, but it could just as well have been a piece of junk.Would a human remain straight during a flight such as this, or would he crumble?Would a granade at such close quarters leave a human being intact or would it blow the victim to shreds?

I caught myself being tricked the FOX-way. If someone just bluntly states someone is a terrorist / enemy, you almost take it as a 100% certainty. But no one knows for sure this was a terrorist or a civilian. It's so blurred.

Military resources may later claim it was a terrorist, but we all know they won't admit flaws...

The question was raised before, and I'm also wondering...how are you so sure it's a terrorist? As you said you where quite a distance away from the scene. How could you be so sure it was INDEED a terrorist, and not a innocent civilian? After seeing your video for a couple of times, I didn't make any details out of it..no clothes, no carried items..what makes you so sure?

The right questions are raised; - how can you tell it is a terrorist? - is it a human being or something else?

Let's assume it's a human being. Then this is an great (or sad) example what a mortar does. Somehow there are people who don't realize what war means. The comment 'I thought this only happens in games' illustrates that.

Mortar rounds are not as 'reliable' as a shot from a sniper, so I doubt this object was identiefied by the army as a threat, or the firing of the mortar was especially aimed at this object. If it was a terrorist, wearing explosives, I assume the body would have been torn into pieces.

So.. enough open questions, but I do think you are doing a great job over there Harald.

It's easy to comment over a cappucino from our convienent living rooms in places like Amsterdam or Istanbul...Harald, keep up the good work!

Others have questioned whether it is even possible for a mortar blast at such close range to leave enough of a human body in tact to be thrown in the air.

It probably depends on the type of shell used, I think. For example, I believe anti-personnel shells are most effective at shredding human flesh, and so in this instance you would indeed be expecting to see something like minced meat being scattered over a large area.

But if the army were using a different type of shell, perhaps for penetrating armour or other reinforced structures, then he may 'only' have been subjected to the shock wave and some fragments, which may leave enough of the body intact for this unique film.

Perhaps someone who knows more about mortars has a better explanation?

Ofcourse it could be that the 'terrorist' in question is not a person at all. Maybe it is one of these crash test dummies. Put on the roof to test if its possible to launch a man into orbit with a mortar blast ;-)

When I saw this video on the website of Elsevier (a major rightwing dutch newsmagazine), I already was having big doubts.

I agree with the writers above that it is very lazy to conclude this is a 'terrorist' without any further investigation. That appears quit biased and very sensationalist. So thats very bad journalism imho!

But my compliments that we are allowed to vent these concerns here directly on this website.

Typical of popular journalism to simply copy statements from friendly governments. How in the hell do you distinguish between an innocent bystander and an 'Al-Qaeda inspired terrorist'. What the heck does that mean? A person inciting fear who is inspired by a group's ideology? And how can you say everybody hates Al-Qaeda, in the Muslim world there's great sympathy for Al-Qaeda's ideology. Not that in the West people have a clue abuot Al-Qaeda's ideology, cause knowing people's motives would prevent demonizing them. It's sad that most journalists are intellectually so poorly educated.

Funny, when you write something like this there are always people who think you are pro western of pro libanon government. But when you write about somthinge that same government screwed up you wil here notthing...

while i agree that harald hasn't given 'absolute proof' of this person being a terrorist, let me remind you of his background as a serious and respected journalist, earned in many long years of war reporting.

he could have argued more and get less carried away by the uniqueness of that shot (and truely such a shot has never been made), but do give him the credit that he knows what was going on. that's what he's there for. he knows the ground.

by simple deduction i do agree with harald. who else than a FAI guy would still be in that area? and even exposed to the fire, apparently on a rooftop, instead of in the cellars?

How does Harald Doornbos know that this is a person? And if it is a person: How does he know that it is a terrorist? On this blog he himself says that he has never actually seen a terrorist there (with the exception of one man with a weapon that he only saw for a couple seconds). In fact nobody sees the terrorists in Tripoli, Lebanon but really they are really, reeeeally there and they are awfully bad man!

So now what? Now he sees flying terrorists! : -) What a lousy journalist, what a lousy piece of video of a piece construction material on which we can collectively project our fears of Islam. “Heheh, excellent! Nicely done! That’ll get ride of them!” etc. etc.How pitiful. Al Qaida are the last ones laughing and with this type of nonsense journalism they will keep laughing.

@M.P. Yeah? Well so would I friend. I've been to several problem countries while they were being reported on. Most recently Eritrea which was being accused by the US and their trained dog being the UN of supporting the Islamic war lords in Somalia. The media just copied the story without asking. When I asked the UN they said that media sources told them. When I asked the media they said the UN told them. Pretty funny for a country with a Christian president and a 50% Christian population. In fact the people there had a good laugh when I told them. I never heard such a joke in my life. You must question EVERYTHING which reporters say. They're always working with a hidden agenda. It could be money, it could be to please the boss or it could be personal glory. This one seams to fit in the last category. The fact that their lies can kill doesn't bother them at all.

@P.M. Are you talking about this little token phrase: "This little clip, to me at least, shows the madness of war"? Is that to convince me that Harald cares? Or was it the previous posting from his hand in which he loudly advertises how he will show us the killing of a terrorist the next day (today)?It's almost reminiscent of the Roman amphitheatres in which the enemies of the Roman empire (or those said to be the enemies) were slaughtered before the people. And you keep saying that Harald’s experience is to convince us that this video is what he says it is. Can you explain to me how experience exempts him from backing up his stories with facts and evidence? Or does it give him special vision with which he can identify terrorists at a mile difference? Or...?

I know it was a terrorist (or more neutral - a Fatah al Islam fighter) because, at the moment there are only Fatah al Islam militants left in the camp. The Lebanese army has laid siege of the camp for almost three months now. That means you can not walk in or out of the camp anymore.

True - until a couple of weeks ago around 3000 Palestinian civilians still lived in the camp (by then 27.000 had already fled, mostly to the nearby Badawi refugee camp).

But these last 3000 civilians left around three weeks ago. Really, some people who comment here should follow the news a little better.

The only 'civilians' who stayed behind were 60 people, mostly women, who are married to Fatah al Islam fighters or are in other ways family members of the militants.

So lets call these women 'civilians', although they stayed with the fighters voluntarily (I mean 29.940 other Palestinians left).

Aha! So there is a change, you might now claim, that the blown up person in the clip was an 'innocent woman'.

My answer: No, there isn't. If you know anything about Islam, you will probably by now realize that an Al-Qaeda style organisation would NEVER EVER use women as fighters. I mean - be real. Yes, over the last couple of years, there have been a couple of female suicide bombers. This is though still extremely rare and mostly used in case male suicide bombers don't have access to a certain targets. But women just do not participate in battle. This is, within the Al Qaeda mindset, entirely haram (sinful).

The 60 'civilians' in the camp, are hiding in basements and tunnels. Most of these shelters are build by the PLO in the '80s during the Lebanse civil war. But with mainstream Fatah (PLO) crumbling, Fatah al Islam took over the Nahr al Bared camp in or around January of this year. They are using these underground PLO bunkers to try to stay alive. Also Fatah al Islam fighters basically stay underground. The shelling by Lebanese forces is so extreme these days, that there is a very small chance of surviving in the open.

Fatah al Islam fighters though still occupy some - above the ground - buildings. Mainly the ground- and first floors of a couple of flats around a destroyed mosque. They still have snipers actively targeting the outskirts of the camp. How I know this: Well, on Tuesday I had to hide a couple of times behind a concrete wall because a Fatah al Islam sniper was shooting at us.

This all said: There is no doubt that the person who flew through the air was a Fatah al Islam fighter. No doubt.

And why call them terrorists? Well, Fatah al Islam beheads innocent people. They kill civilians. A couple of days ago I visited a 25 year old Palestian guy who lived and worked in the Nahr al Bared camp as a watch salesman. He was shot in the head - without any reason - by Fatah al Islam militants, two weeks prior to the beginning of the trouble in the camp. This is what the militants would do pretty often. Just randomly kill someone to frighten the others. The 25-year old guy survived the bullet in his head and sits now like a vegetable in a hospital. He lost his memory, has basically no clue who or where he is. Thank you very little Fatah al Islam! His parents, who are Palestinians, told me: "These terrorists should all be killed - there is just no other way."

Luckily for Fatah al Islam and Al Qaeda, the West is packed with apologists. Westerners who have no clue what radical Islam really stands for and who have no idea what Al Qaeda's actions and ideology really means to its main victims: Normal, smart, peaceful and middle-of-the-road Muslims.

Anyway. I admit that there is a 0.000006 percent chance that the person depected in the clip wasn't a Fatah al Islam fighter but an innocent jogger who got lost in Beirut, ran 90 kilometers to Nahr al Bared, fought himself a way through the Lebanese army lines and then was hit by a mortar. Please, be real.

Answer on question 2 (a little bit shorter, sorry for my rather lengthy first answer): The flying object in the clip was a human being and not a chair or so. First of all, take a look at the clip, especially when he falls back to earth you clearly can see arms, legs etc.

Secondly: I put the camera next to me on a concrete wall (the same that protects us from sniper fire). I was kind of babbling with civilians next to me and, with them, chekcing out the heavy shelling 600 meters away. For already an hour shells exploded every couple of seconds. The moment the mortar in the clip hit and the person was catapulted into the air, suddenly everybody on the balcony started to shout: "Look, look. My god, that is a person!" So actually from the position we were in, we could all see it pretty clearly with the naked eye.

Last thing: How is it possible that a human being is being thrown in the air and not instantly torn to pieces by the impact of the explosion?

I have no answer to this question. I guess that most people who get hit by a mortar indeed die on the spot and never take off into the air. This, as it seems to me, looks very much like a 'freak-accident'. Maybe out of 10 million people who die because of shelling, one gets thrown in the air like in the video.

That's why it such unique footage.

Still - everybody is free to believe what the clip is all about. I have though something to admit to people who doubt the whole clip. Actually, after the person in the video fell back to earth, he stood up, removed the dust from his jacket and said in fluent Norwegian: " Gud - Jeg kjenne leve!" ("God, I feel alive!"). We later had a drink with him in a nearby pub. And the strange thing was - He was actually Danish.

=Actually, after the person in the video fell back to earth, he stood up, removed the dust from his jacket and said in fluent Norwegian: " Gud - Jeg kjenne leve!" ("God, I feel alive!"). We later had a drink with him in a nearby pub. And the strange thing was - He was actually Danish.=

Harald, it would have been better if you would have provided this context from the beginning. Also it may be that we're all ignorant about Lebanon's situation but I think you may need to come home more. Because if you did you might find out how your initial posting fits into very different and disturbing context here.p.s. Americans are not the only ones who only listen to news (or show news) that suits them.

Thank you very much for your background explanation, I really appreciate that. And I apologize if I offended you for talking about 'bad journalism'.

This kind of context is something that rarely appears in media of the 'YouTube-era'. Thats why everybody always should be very careful believing what the media wants us to 'consume'.

It is also thanks to the openness of your blog where people have possibility to react critically at presented 'newsfacts'. After reading your context, I now believe the change is very tiny this wasn't a 'terrorist' flying in the air.

I agree with your definition of 'terrorists': people who harm or kill innocent people for 'political' or 'religious' purposes (very shortened definition...)

By the way, I also call 'democratic' governments or companies 'terroristic' if they do the same thing. And also western governments surely do these kind of crimes. But calling them 'terrorists' almost never happens in the 'western' mainstream press.

Anyway, I wish you all the best with your reports from that area. I have lots of respect for your task. Take care!

fully agree - I visit the Netherlands like once a year for a couple of days. Noticed the change in attitude though. But its not my fault that people use this clip for their propaganda crap. I'm just putting a very rare incident on my blog - that's all. And I am already getting tired of this boooooring joke: "Oh, he just missed the 72 virgins". Very predictable.

@ Indyalista

You are most welcome. It's ture - internet age is all about short, short, quick, quick. No background, just surfing from website to website. 10 seconds here, 15 seconds there. Anyhow, there's kind of nothing we can do about that.On terrorism by governments: Of course there is state terrorism in this world. But this time here in Lebanon - its a bunch of radical islamists who are the bad guys. I really think it shouldnt matter who commits the crime. If multinationals or governments start randomly killing or beheading people, I'll be the first one to put a clip on Youtube of a flying president of CEO.Thanks again for your comment and all best.

Congratulations on the lucky shot. Great explanation on why it had to be a terrorist and not some poor, downtrodden guy/girl. Be warned, however,some people will still claim it was a trick, an inflatable doll or a flying chair. ;-)

I'm in the marines and this vid got quite famous already. I've read someone asking if that is possible, and sorry to ruin all the fun but a mortar by its very nature will not send something airborne like that. For that to happen as its shown in the video the body had to have been shot out of the mortar tube itself.

About Me

(b. 1967) is a Dutch journalist, partly based in Beirut, Lebanon and in Islamabad, Pakistan. He is the Arab World correspondent for the GPD newspaper group (www.gpd.nl) from Holland. After his Journalism study, he worked for a leftwing Dutch daily, De Waarheid. During the early '90s he started crisis reporting - Croatia, Gulf War, Lebanon. In 1993 he became the Zagreb, Croatia, based former-Yugoslavia correspondent for a Dutch newspaper. In 1994 he moved to the Bosnian captial Sarajevo where he was based until 1997. After a six month stay in Sydney, Australia, he moved in 1998 to Kosovo's capital Pristina to cover the war for GPD-newspapers and NOS-radio/tv. In 2000 he was appointed the New Delhi based South Asia correspondent for GPD and NOS. Immediately after September 11 he moved to the Pakistani capital Islamabad. In October 2004 he was appointed Arab World correspondent for GPD newspapers, based in Beirut, Lebanon. He devides his time between Beirut and Islamabad. A man of many passions, he loves horse back riding, skiing, politics, cars, writing, gems, south Asian jewelry, gadgets, carpets, maps, Bosnia and Thai food. He is the proud owner of a horse and two cats.